


When You Don't Know Me Anymore

by beautifulinquiries



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Lots of Angst, M/M, Smut, alcohol mention, drug mention, post March 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-23 09:00:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4870960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifulinquiries/pseuds/beautifulinquiries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was eleven at night and Harry was by himself in his other house in LA, the more enclosed one he bought after Four released when the idea of them no longer being them became much more evident. He was sat on his ugly-but-in-an-artsy-way couch, scrolling through his feed as the television played in the background. He was not really paying attention if he’s being honest, because if there is something Harry does best, it’s zoning out the loud bits. Maybe that was always his problem.</p><p>But it’s different this time, because it felt like a catch of lightning in his bones when he heard the name, when he always hears the name.</p><p>or post March 2015. The one where Harry finds out Zayn's always loved him from a talk show and the next 24 hours are of him trying to figure it out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When You Don't Know Me Anymore

**Author's Note:**

  * For [catholicschoolgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/catholicschoolgirl/gifts).



> This is a mess and I'm sorry. 
> 
> For my first beta, who screamed at me for months to get my shit together and then was always there when I needed her, thank you. You're the best and you always scream at me about my writing and that's how I know I'm on the right path lmao. Love you babe. 
> 
> To my second beta who literally took up 13k without a second glance when I asked randomly in the middle of the night. You're amazing and I honestly couldn't have done this without you. both of you.
> 
> I do not own any of One Direction or their family members and this is pure fiction. 
> 
> Also I may have tweaked just a little bit of the events or timeline, but nothing too noticeable I hope. 
> 
> Have fun ;)

Harry always drives when he says goodbye. It's something about the journey, the process of leaving that gets to him. It's an allusion strong enough to give him the strength to actually leave, because as he always tells himself he's _done it once, he can do it again_. It has always been his way of figuring out the mess of his head, when the rooms began to speak and the shadows began to mix. He would grab his keys and leave, taking the chaos with him and dropping it off at the side of the road before coming back. 

He always drives. He drove the night before he left for his first tour, with four shiny new friends and shiny new clothes and a shiny new paycheck. Technically, Gemma had driven then, driving along dark turns and scratchy shadows, letting the tires make the only noise because there was really nothing to say. She just held his hand and drove until they had to go back and Harry got on that plane.

So when he saw the interview, the first thing he did was of course, to drive. 

It was eleven at night and Harry was by himself in his other house in LA, the more enclosed one he bought after Four released when the idea of them no longer being _them_ became much more evident. He was sat on his ugly-but-in-an-artsy-way couch, scrolling through his feed as the television played in the background. He was not really paying attention if he’s being honest, because if there is something Harry does best, it’s zoning out the loud bits. Maybe that was always his problem.

But it’s different this time, because it felt like a catch of lightning in his bones when he heard the name, when he always hears the name.

_Next on Jimmy Fallon, Zayn Malik and talk of his new album “Take The Time” with the hit new single “Retouched”, the hot new jam that has been sweeping the charts for the past two weeks. Stay put to find out what exactly this star has been up to._

It had been a year since he last heard from Zayn, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. People are busy, lives go on. He actually last talked to the other boys in person at Liam’s wedding three months ago. Niall was the most frequent texter of all of them, and Louis and him chatted a bit on the phone here and there, always talk about meeting up again soon but never actually planning a day. He knows they’re doing okay, basically, that Niall hasn’t lost a leg yet and Liam just built a new studio in his basement and that Louis hasn’t killed anyone. Yet. He knows, is all. 

He also knows it’s not that big of deal that him and Zayn haven’t talked; it’s just natural to lose touch. Which of course is why he put his phone down and turned the volume up.

When the show started playing and Fallon started his speech, introducing Zayn, Harry felt a pang. It was ironic because Harry’s been on that side of the camera his whole career, watching from the outside in, and it felt like he’s done more interviews than seen them, but somehow hearing Fallon say Zayn’s name made him feel more anxious than whenever he was the one being watched behind the camera.

Zayn came out in black slacks that fit his frame wonderfully, with a deep red sweater that looked very much like the one from the 2018 Winter Louis Vuitton Line that isn’t even out this year. He looked just like he always does to Harry, which made his insides twist in the way he’d been pushing down for years now. The way he can’t understand too well - or rather, doesn’t let himself understand - but just labels as mourning.

Fallon and Zayn hugged when they met, and Zayn waved to the crowd as they screamed his name and some cried in hysterics. It brought back flashbacks of similar voices screaming all their names, when they were all together, but Harry shook his head to forget. 

He can’t seem to forget.

Fallon started off asking Zayn how he’d been and how moving permanently to LA had been treating him, all to which Zayn replied with comfortable smiles and happy tones.

“It’s been great, yeah,” he said, using a finger to brush at his eyebrow. Something Harry cataloged away a long time ago, when Zayn first started popping up to fashion shows and movie premiers around the world .

“You’ve moved into an apartment right? Or a house? We never know with you, somehow you always seem to avoid the cameras” to which Fallon turned to the audience and jokingly rolled his eyes, making them all laugh. Including Zayn.

“Yeah, ‘ve always been the type to, like, just chill out and hide away. Been like, ‘mysterious’ I guess” he said, quoting with his hands and the reference made a couple people yell in the audience.

“I’m glad, I’m glad though. LA is treating you right and you’re enjoying it here, I’m seeing.”

“Yeah man, it’s been sick. LA chillin,” he says with a smile and Harry rolled his eyes because of course Zayn would quote a title of a song on his album. Of course he would. 

There was a commercial break Harry can’t remember watching because nothing seemed to sit still enough to make his brain stop running with times he's been trying to forget for so long. 

“And we’re back” Jimmy had announced “with Zayn Malik, Grammy winner and MTV’s Artist of the Year for his album “On Second Thoughts” and his new album that was just released last week called “Take The Time”, which has debuted as number one in 38 countries already. Congrats, man. But Zayn, before we get into the new, let’s get into the old. Let’s talk about some of the past, yeah?”

Harry froze as he watched Zayn smile back at Fallon, physically undisturbed as he answered “go ahead”.

“So of course, as everyone knows, you were part of the biggest boyband of all time, One Direction” where Fallon had to pause because the screaming was so loud - which made Harry smile - before he could ontinue on “and you left to follow your heart and true sound, which has been phenomenal. We also know you and Perrie, your former fiance, are actually friends again and working on a track together for her new album. But take me back and tell me, do you still talk to your former bandmates?”

Harry had flinched slightly. 

“Yeah yeah of course. Just the other day Liam texted me saying he was in town and came over, and we just chilled for a bit and hung out and caught up. I text Louis every now and then, checking up on how he’s doing with the whole being a dad thing.”

Harry didn’t know that.

“Which we can only guess is kicking his butt.”

“Louis is chaotic at best, but with a child thrown into that...” and he turned and smiled at the audience, probably sending some into pits of anxiety and tears. “But nah, he’s great. He and Brianna are great, and Charlie is beautiful.”

“Poor Brianna, having to take care of two kids in that house”

“I know mate, she’s got her work lined up for her.”

The audience laughed but Harry’s breathing became tighter.

“So what about the other two, Niall Horan and Harry Styles?” Jimmy asked, his smile always big whenever he talked about Harry. Harry’s wasn’t smiling then, eyes glued to the tv as he waited for Zayn’s answer. 

“We’re all good. We talk every once in awhile, just making sure the other is good and promising to catch up sometime when we’re not all busy with our lives. They’re still my boys” to which the crowd _aws_ so loudly that Harry actually did smile. He gruffed after though because the answer is so vague Harry’s not sure if he’s talking about Niall or him or even Ben Winston at this point.

“I’m glad you say that, actually. Because the other day I was helping my kid with an art project thing and we had to cut pieces out of magazines to do this collage/paper mache thing, which is torture by the way, but I want you to look at this magazine I found from 2015. And I stress the fact that I found this because I can’t believe it was actually in my house. But it’s News Weekly, and it has all these stories and like celebrities without makeup and Bachelor fiascos but I want you to look closely at the top because, and I kid you not, this is my favorite headline from a magazine. It says ‘Zayn leaves Perrie… for HARRY’.” To which Fallon handed over the magazine to Zayn for him to see, and Harry’s jaw actually dropped and nearly hit the floor. He vaguely remembered Liam telling him about that story back in 2015, but he shrugged it off as unimportant at the time and never dreamed of it being brought up on a fucking talk show, of all things. 

Zayn took the magazine and laughed, shook his head as he looked it over. “Of course it says that. Wow, I actually never heard about this one.”

“I had a field day with it, honestly” Fallon confessed,” I kept showing my wife and asking her if she thought it was true before she told me if I asked one more time she would make me sleep on the couch.”

“That’s laughs, mate. Wow, I actually can’t believe this. Is- This a picture of me kissing Harry. I’ve not seen it before.”

And Harry felt his heart kick somewhere near his stomach.

“Yeah, it’s from tumblr, I think. Something a fan made, it says in the article. It’s interesting though, seeing as how there are already so many photos of you boys kissing each other.”

Zayn simply smiles at the photo, his eyes crinkling in a way that displays both affections and tension. Which is... odd. "We were close," he offers up, simply smiling. 

"All five of you were always on top of each other, and as I recall many fans had speculations that at least two of you were together, the most infamous being" He looks down onto the card on his table "Larry stylinson. I still remember that mess" Fallon laughed, Zayn snorting a laugh with him. 

"They thought up a lot," he said back, his shoulder a bit more tense than before. 

"Were any of these 'speculations' true?" Fallon asks, in the sincere ways he does where he makes you feel like you’re with a trusted friend instead of national television.

"Well" Zayn said while sitting up, Harry's ears twitching at the change in his tone of voice. "To be completely honest, yeah, a bit." 

The whole audience seemed then to sit up on that, Harry mirroring them as he sat up on his couch. 

"Really.” Harry moved even closer to the tv instead of turning up the volume. "Which ones, if I may ask?"

"Uhm" Zayn said shyly, smiling at himself and making Harry's hands shake. "I guess I could, uh, say this magazine wasn't too far off."

And he looked up then and smiled bashfully at the camera, like he didn’t just break a void, like he didn’t just break something in Harry.

"You and Harry?" 

"Well, erm, mostly just me," he said, shy again, always shy. Harry wanted to shake his tv with the suspense Zayn was dragging him through. Zayn ducked his head again then, letting his fingers fall over the picture of him and Harry, something similar to an interview from 2013 that Harry remembers, something about a mask. How ironic. "He didn't know."

"I'm assuming he does now," Fallon asks with a laugh, his eyes a bit wide.

"Well if he's watching, he absolutely does now."

And that's how Harry found himself at the beach at four in the morning. It’s still dark outside his car, September painting longer nights than days. The sun seems to stretch itself awake around six, so Harry is left with black water crashing delicately against cold sand. 

Somehow though it doesn’t feel like a goodbye.

Not when he never knew he had something to let go of. 

++

The thing with driving is that he can pretend he’s alone. He can pretend he’s just another soul lost on a highway, trying to find a home between the white lines that guide him forward into another endless day. He can pretend he’s not uncomfortable, that he’s not completely and utterly confused. That he hasn’t felt any sense of rest since he turned off the tv and walked out of his house, speeding past the walls that say home but scream stanger. 

He can pretend anyway. 

The thing with Harry is, he doesn’t deal with emotions. He’s the kind to sit down and listen to you speak, try to understand how you feel, maybe rub your feet when you’ve had a long day and the weight of it seems to screw into your muscles. He’s definitely the one you call at five in the morning, when the sun isn’t even awake yet but you can’t sleep with the thoughts in your head, so he comes and gets you and takes you to that cute little record store that’s miraculously open at unreasonable times of the day and he’ll pick out records you didn’t know existed and make you listen to songs that drown out all the ugly colors in your life. 

But he’s not the kind to listen to himself, is the thing. He drives because he can put music on and pretend he’s about to drive across an ocean, maybe drive across a galaxy, to a place where gravity and desolation don’t exist and he can drive past mountains without worrying about them falling down if he crashes into them too hard. He drives because it’s the matter of distance and how far he can go until he knows he has to come back. If he has to come back.

He drives because he can tell himself it’s not running away even though it absolutely is. 

When Zayn left in 2015, Harry actually flew. He got on a plane and just went, he didn’t care where he went or what time of day it was- it was 2:15 am- or if a plane was even ready; he just went. Niall went with him, Louis preferring to lock himself in the bus and Liam went to the gym. Which is normally where Harry would have gone but he needed more, he needed to leave in a way that was just, more. Because this time, he wasn’t leaving, he was being left. 

So now, two years later, after everyone has left, after everything stopped, there’s just Harry. There’s just him in an empty car filled with tangible thoughts so thick he can see them fogging up his windshield.

He drives until he thinks he’s far enough away that nothing familiar can reach him, and he pulls over to the side of the road somewhere along the 101, where the dry mountains start to consume his view instead of the grey sea. He finds a cosy little diner that makes him feel like home isn’t far away, wherever home is now, and before he knows it he’s sitting in a booth with a steaming cup of hot coffee sending waves of warmth toward his face as he sits and gazes at his phone.

He didn’t mean to send it, he tells himself. It’s an unreasonable hour, there’s no way his message was actually opened right now. Especially when he’s texting someone who loves sleep more than he loves air. Harry sent the text this early in the morning because he knows he won’t get a reply, he tells himself. It’ll give him time. 

He knew he was wrong long before the phone buzzed on the counter. 

_I’m still up_

Harry breathes out a sigh.

_Can I come over?_

Buzz. Buzz. 

_Of course.  
Door’s unlocked_

Harry throws a twenty on the table and walks out of the warm air of the diner with wings on his back but weights on his ankles. 

He didn’t touch the coffee.

+++

It’s a bit ridiculous that Harry drove so very far away from his house only to drive all the way back and turn left down his street and go up a block to get to Zayn’s. It’s a bit ridiculous that he drove so far to get away from his problem only to turn around and drive straight to it in the end. 

It’s a good thing though, it really is. Because it gives Harry times to pay attention to the thoughts he was ignoring earlier. The ones that still drip down his spine like ice water against his bones. Mainly, they’re memories. Warm memories, fuzzy memories, memories he’s remembering way too fast for his liking. 

Every touch, every smile, every reassuring hand. Everytime he told himself it didn’t matter because this was them, this was fun, this was work. Everytime he told himself that the boys were just that, his boys, his lads. They were his lads. It was fun. That he couldn’t, wouldn’t, let himself ruin it because of thoughts of a pretty boy in the other room with eyelashes long enough they could crash the heavens with a blink, or with arms warm enough they would stop the shivering Harry use to get when they were on the other side of the world. Thoughts of soft lips that use to press against his skin in small ways or silly ways and maybe even serious ways that Harry would tell himself to forget about, to erase, to place in the back of his head because they were always small and silly but only ever serious to him, it felt like. Everything was only ever serious to him. 

Harry almost pulls over thinking about it. 

Even now though, when he and Zayn haven’t talked in a year for Christ’s sake, and he can just send him one text and Zayn tells him his door is unlocked. It’s small enough for Zayn to say that. It’s serious enough to make Harry want to throw up. 

Nothing helps either, nothing on the radio and no song on his phone seems to ease the drive, to calm the feelings he tried to hide but won’t stay gone anymore. Nothing stops the memories he feels drilling holes in his brain. He doesn’t stop them. 

Harry can’t lie, he was embarrassing. He use to cling to people like static, use to hang off of them like they were trees, before he realized just how much the camera actually got on the film, how much of him was captured, of his gazes, of his touches. People were magnetic to him, like a brand new toy you just couldn’t put down because the need to learn every every noise it made and every feature it had was so strong. They were shiny, they were different. Louis was astounding to Harry, he could just sit and admire him for hours on how he would react to the world. Liam was someone Harry wanted to see talk, because he always talked so damn fast and always so passionately it was ridiculous. And with Niall, he just wanted to make him laugh. Niall was sunshine all by himself, it was amazing to see the way everything would orbit around him and brighten him up even more. 

But with Zayn. With Zayn it wasn’t about watching him, studying him. It wasn’t about trying to figure out how he fit into their world, into Harry’s life. Harry didn’t stay up late at night wondering what Zayn’s favorite part of a song was and what it means about him or his place in the group. 

No Harry stayed awake at night wondering if Zayn saw it. If he saw the way Harry looked at him, the way he touched him in front of the cameras and the way he touched them when they were alone and if he saw the difference between the two, if there was even a difference. He wondered if Zayn would touch him the way he did because he wanted to or because he thought Harry wanted him to, and he didn’t know which was worse. 

Harry tries to untense his hands from the wheel when he notices how they started to hurt. He looks at the speedometer and he’s going much too fast.

The drive takes less than it should have because he was driving too fast, and soon enough Harry finds himself in front of the same beautiful, grey house he passes way too much for it to be an accident when there’s an easier way to get to his own house. It always depressed him a bit that Zayn was a mile walk away and yet they hadn’t really seen each other- in person mind you- in years. How Zayn was also so close but too far away to catch. 

It’s just starting to get bright outside when Harry turns the engine off, letting it’s muted roar hush into peaceful silence that he lets himself take it. He leans his forehead against the steering wheel and tries to focus on his breathing, on anything but the thought of what he might just find inside those walls. He’s always been a bit of a dramatic, he knows. But somehow this doesn’t seem too far off from reality. 

He sees the light inside the lower level of the house flicker on, and he knows Zayn is inside, watching him. He knows Zayn’s probably sitting on some humongous, overly comfortable couch like the ones he always used to steal from people so he could nap on, because Zayn always needs a make-do bed in a five foot radius around him. He’s probably inside, smoking cigarette upon cigarette like he used to when he couldn’t sleep and he thought smoking would help him quiet his own demons, letting the smoke swirl around him instead of his own thoughts. He’s probably inside and just staring at the window, waiting for Harry to make the next move. Because if it’s one thing about them that Harry’s sure of, is that they always know whose move it is. 

Harry takes a deep breathe and gets out of the car, reminding himself that they’re adults. He can do this. It’s just Zayn. 

_Just Zayn._

When he walks up the steps to the house, he sees movement behind the curtains, in the weird non-transparent glass next to the door. Like Zayn’s been waiting at the door for a while now, waiting to hear Harry’s car. Waiting for Harry’s move. And it clicks inside him, how Zayn must have been waiting for Harry’s move, waiting because he knew Harry would show up, like clockwork. How he was waiting for Harry to show him instead of make him guess, to change the game. How he’s still waiting behind the door, like he was behind every door Harry thought he has to put between them because he thought he didn’t have a choice. 

He’s tired of thinking he doesn’t have a choice. 

So when Zayn opens the door, all tired eyes and flawless beauty, Harry feels the tick in him, like a clock, making everything move again. Zayn’s got a beanie on his head, covering his hair that he’s kept light for some time now, which Harry knows because he has stalked him only an embarrassing amount of times since he’s met the guy. He’s also got on a black hoodie that frame his shoulders sinfully and matching joggers that drape over his legs beautifully, adorning him like a midnight dream. But out of everything, out of all the blinding beauty and the small but noticeable changes about him, it’s the small, timid smile that appears on his face when neither of them say anything for a minute that breaks Harry’s heart because this unsure vibe he’s getting between them, isn’t Zayn, not Harry’s Zayn. They’ve never been stuck. 

So Harry changes the game. 

He crashes into Zayn like a flash of lightning, eliminating any barrier between them just to get his hands on Zayn, to tear into his clothes and his head and his space and just him. And it does exactly what Harry needed, as soon as his lips find Zayn’s. It makes everything go quiet. The way Zayn’s hands grab onto him makes everything go red, everything go bright in the grey Harry’s been accustomed to. It makes everything feel like he’s burning in water.

He doesn’t ask if Zayn’s alone. If he’s seeing anyone, if this is okay. He doesn’t care. Not when he knows he needs this, they need this. 

Zayn grabs onto Harry just as much as Harry is clinging onto Zayn, fingers tightening into anything they can find: cloth, skin, feral energy, anything. Harry needs everything. His hands finally move upward, tugging at Zayn’s sweater and pushing it over his broad shoulders, past his head and onto the floor along with his beanie as Harry pushes him against the door and starts biting at his neck.

“Hi” Zayn pants, hands gripping on Harry’s biceps painfully. Wonderfully, when Harry thinks about it. He’s real. He’s real and Harry feels his knees go weak as his body starts to thrum awake as he feels how real Zayn is against him, in a way he hasn’t been in years. He feels the same .

“Do you remember me?” Harry asks against his lips, kissing him again with open eyes before moving to his jaw, biting along the sharp edge of it as Zayn starts to slide his hands up Harry’s back. “Do I feel familiar?”

“God” Zayn says heavily, pulling Harry closer. “Fuck. Hi.”

And he takes Harry’s shirt off, throwing it across his large foyer - of fucking course Zayn’s foyer is the size of a tour bus- and pulling Harry back to him immediately after, positioning them flush against each other so that Harry can feel Zayn fattening up against his thigh. His hips move of their own record, rubbing against Zayn as Zayn rubs against him, both of them moaning and their breaths hitching as they kiss and rub against each other like a bunch of hormonal teenagers in the locker room after football practice. 

Harry doesn’t want to say hi back to Zayn. He doesn’t want to acknowledge that this is the first contact they’ve had in a year, the first time they’ve touched in even longer than that. He doesn’t want to be reminded that they’ve never greeted each other like this because the way this feels is so natural even though it’s absolutely not natural at all for them. But really, honest-to-God, swear on his family’s grave honestly, he doesn’t want to give himself the chance to change his mind.

“Harry,” Zayn says, stilling as Harry keeps trying to kiss him, burying his smell in his memory. He turns his head to the left and Harry chases his lips, loving the feel of them, loving how he’s finally able to know what Zayn tastes like.

He tastes like the first few months of college. Like cigarettes and broken dreams, dangerous hope, and if anything, painful beginnings.

Is this a beginning?

Harry asks him with a kiss, and when Zayn returns it, he feels like it’s an answer.

“Harry,” he says again however, trying again to turn his head and succeeding just enough so that Harry gets distracted by the miles of skin he wants to devour and stops kissing him. “Not here.”

“Hmmm?” Harry hums as he licks his throat, making Zayn’s leg twitch and his arms tighten around Harry’s waist.

“Harry, fuck,” Zayn repeats, more strainful this time, his voice snapping Harry’s attention to him.

“Yes?”

“Not here. Room. The bedroom.” His eyes are glowing when Harry finds them, like tickles of fire are licking behind them. Harry stares at him because, if he's being honest, this is the last thing he expected to happen. He expected to talk, maybe fight, maybe even ignore everything and just chill in Zayn's living room, passing back and forth a joint or a bottle and listen to some of each other’s new stuff until one of them becomes too tired and Harry has to go home. He didn't expect to have Zayn wrap around him, pulling him close and kissing him. He didn't expect for them to fall into each other within seconds, like they are crashing through the atmosphere and burning with every mile they pass, every second they spend together. He didn't expect it at all.

It floors him, enough that Zayn reacts by grabbing his hand and leading the way, probably taking Harry's hesitance as his unfamiliarity with the house instead of Harry doubting it all. He's not sure if it's one or the other or both, but he lets Zayn lead him anyway. 

Zayn's room is exactly how you would picture it. Dark grey walls with a white ceiling, different framed pictures of random scenes or instruments or drawings hanging off each wall; a massive yellow, red, and blue abstract painting sits above the king sized bed that stands in the middle of the dark hardwood room. The bed looks expensive if anything, the black sheets fluffy and silky, which Harry only notices when Zayn pushes him on it. 

“We should probably talk,” Zayn says as he starts to unbutton Harry’s jeans, words somewhat contradicting his actions. 

“Probably,” Harry says, watching him for one second before flipping them over, gaining back control. Zayn looks up at his with a surprised look, hands freezing above Harry’s skin. “So let’s talk.”

“Okay,” Zayn says with a swallow, his hands still frozen. 

Harry leans down and starts to nose at Zayn’s throat, Zayn moving like a reflex and giving Harry access to his entire neck by turning his head to the left. Harry doesn’t lick him or bite him or kiss him, he just hovers above Zayn’s skin, listening to Zayn’s shallow breaths and feeling how he stills and moves underneath him at Harry’s slow movements. 

“You have a lot of explaining to do,” Harry says into Zayn’s skin, the breaths making him shiver. 

“So do you, apparently,” Zayn says back in a hushed tone, hands coming to rest on Harry’s back. 

“When” is all Harry asks, his lips just barely touching Zayn’s flushed skin. He knows Zayn understands him, can feel his brain trying to catch up with his emotions. 

“You’ve always been special,” Zayn says, hands gripping onto Harry’s back more as Harry still doesn’t touch him. 

“That’s not what I ask,” Harry says as he shakes his head, his lips barely touching Zayn’s neck every time he passes it. 

“This is fucking unfair.” Zayn says, breathing a bit more harsh and gripping Harry tighter. 

“You wanted to talk now,” Harry answers. 

“Not like this, with you making me wait.”

“Just like you did?”

Zayn flips them at that, Harry pushing him over the edge. 

“That’s really not fucking fair. I didn’t know how to do this,” Zayn tells him, leaning down to nip at Harry’s collarbones. 

“So a talk show is the best method now.”

“Stop being stroppy.”

“I have a right to be.”

Zayn bites his throat at that one, Harry groaning as Zayn starts to suck on his skin and Harry starts to get hot in his jeans. 

“I had a right to tell it how I wanted to.”

“When, Zayn?” Harry says, gritting his teeth as Zayn starts to lick at his bruising skin. 

“Always Harry. Always,” he breathes into his skin, stilling then as he says it. “I was always different with you.”

Harry turns his head, wanting Zayn to keep marking him and doing something other than just talking because Harry can’t handle that, can’t handle on focusing on the loud bits of unspoken words behind Zayn’s confessions. 

“No you weren’t. You were the same with all of us.” Was he, though? Or did Harry just tell himself that?

“It wasn’t the same,” Zayn says as he starts to kiss his skin again, catching onto what Harry needs, just like he did for years in hotel rooms and between outfit changes and body changes and soul changes. 

“Really?” Harry realizes it’s a lousy response but Zayn’s tongue is just a tad too distracting right now. 

“I looked up videos of us, on youtube” Zayn says before kissing his check, trailing more down his jaw. “Remember the video we saw that one time, of moments with us and how someone said they saw the way we looked at each other? I looked for more. Right before the interview,” Zayn offers, trailing more kisses all over Harry’s face, getting sweeter with every press of his lips. 

“I looked at you different. I always did. I guess I didn’t, like, know how much the cameras actually got of me when I looked at you. I mean, guess I didn’t try to hide it a lot.”

And he stops kissing Harry on his chest, right over Harry’s heart that’s beating erratically against his ribs. He knows Zayn can feel it, maybe that’s why he stopped. 

“I always tried to touch you.” Harry hears himself say, surprising both of them. “I always tried to find a way to get your attention.”

“I realized when I was watching the videos that I was always waiting to give it to you,” Zayn says, giving him one gentle kiss above his heart, sighing after it. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Harry asks, his shaking hands moving to Zayn’s shoulders in order to get him to move up, to face Harry again. Because Harry needs this. 

“I didn’t know how,” Zayn tells him, eyes flickering between Harry’s own. And it’s not enough, not nearly enough, but Harry already feels the heavy ache that starts to try and outweigh the fluttering of his heart so he seeks Zayn’s lips again before his thoughts start to fog up his brain again and he can’t enjoy this anymore. 

“I flirted with you a lot,” Zayn says before Harry brings Zayn into him again and Zayn is kissing him with the taste of the words. 

“I couldn’t ever tell if it was real or not.” Harry kisses back. 

“Always.”

When Zayn presses Harry into the sheets again, it’s not silly, but it’s gentle. He roams his hands up and down the curves and angles of Harry’s body, covering his body even though Harry is bigger than Zayn. Somehow though, Zayn always seemed like the bigger one. The bigger silence, the heavier touch, the deeper hug. He seems bigger even now when Harry’s built and older and Zayn is still lean and angular because Harry always makes himself so small, always tries to hunch into himself and Zayn always let him because he would stretch to make up for the space Harry tried to leave behind. Like now, he stretches above Harry as he kisses him with a gentle strength Harry feels in his muscles, like sparks of electricity tickling and twitching them with every flick of tongue Harry lets himself take. 

“What do you want?” Harry asks him, gasping when Zayn opens his mouth against Harry’s right nipple and sucking on it, flicking his tongue over it before sucking, again and again. His hand moves to Harry’s left, pinching and playing with it as Harry grabs the silk sheets of the bed and twists them. He doesn’t want to make Zayn answer, make him stop what he’s doing, but he also needs an answer. 

When Zayn sucks harder though, Harry knows the answer. 

Harry kisses Zayn when he starts to play with Harry’s other two nipples, smiling when Zayn mutters “always loved these two the most” against Harry’s lips. They take the jeans and the sweats off, their pants moist and straining with the press of their erections behind the thin fabric. They’re both wearing black briefs, Harry rolling his eyes before closing them altogether when Zayn starts to take them off and replace them with his tongue. He tries to touch him in every way possible it seems, sucking him off and rubbing his thighs, nosing at the thick patch of black hair above his dick that Harry forgot to shave. Zayn licks and sucks him like a religion, eyes closing and opening like he’s trying to make sure it’s still Harry but also like he’s trying to savor the feeling, like when kissing someone. Harry’s head falls and rises almost as much as his chest, becoming too overwhelmed with the feeling of Zayn’s warm, wet mouth and letting his head fall against the mattress but also being too stubborn and wanting to remember every detail so he opens his eyes and raises his head to watch. 

He feels Zayn’s throat start to relax and take more of him in, the head of his prick touching the back of Zayn’s throat and causing him to make a choking noise, spit starting to drip and wet more of Harry. It’s too much for Harry and he feels his stomach start to clench and tighten, so he grabs Zayn’s hair and pulls hard enough to make Zayn whine and pull off, making a popping noise before gasping for air. 

“Fucking hell, Zayn,” Harry gasps along with him, his breathing so shallow he feels like he’s having an asthma attack. 

“Why’d you make me stop?” Zayn asks shakily, wiping some of the spit from his mouth. 

“I want you to save some of those skills for eating me out, before you fuck me,” Harry says, still breathing hard and watching Zayn from above him, the way he stills and looks down at Harry with cautious eyes. 

“Are you sure?” he asks, his eyes flickering between Harry’s, searching him out. He’s probably a bit freaked out by all this, and honestly so is Harry, but he doesn’t give it a second thought before flipping over and turning his head to the side, watching Zayn and not saying anything as he offers himself up. 

_What do you want?_

Zayn slowly climbs over him, kissing the back of his neck and leisurely kissing down his spine, licking and biting the skin along the way and massaging parts of Harry’s back before positioning himself in front of Harry, pulling at him so Harry gets it and moves until he’s on the edge of the bed and Zayn is kneeling before him on the ground, hands pressing on his cheeks. He starts to massage them, and Harry begins to tremble in anticipation. 

“Are you sure?” Zayn asks, mouth licking the lower part of Harry’s back, making him shake even harder. 

“Please.”

When he feels the first press of tongue, Harry lets himself fall into it. 

+++

It’s dark out when Harry blinks his eyes open, the covers puddling around his waist and arms circling his torso. He’s laying on Zayn’s chest, his slow breathing and steady heart beat chasing rhythms around Harry’s head. He feels the hand sprawled across Zayn’s stomach because of the soft skin contradicting the hard muscle beneath it, making his palm twitch.

He feels Zayn’s nose in his hair, feels how heavy Zayn’s breath is when he sighs into it, his nose searching his scalp. Harry feels himself go lax, the knots of anxiety in his stomach twisting but the rest of him unhinging. He nuzzles into Zayn’s chest, loving the way Zayn tightens his arms around him. 

_What do you want?_

He asked Zayn that last night, between kisses and heavy touches, between harsh breaths and painful gasping. He was asking the same thing, really. If he wanted this, if he wanted more, what he meant when he kissed him so gently Harry wanted to cry. Harry wanted to know what Zayn meant when he opened him up so gently, so passionately with his tongue that Harry sobbed into his $400 bed sheets - Harry checked the price when he went to the restroom earlier - unashamed because it felt like Zayn was licking and kissing parts of him awake, making him alive again. 

He wanted to know what Zayn meant when he had said always, when he had kissed him with it.

_What do you want?_

Harry looks up when he realizes he said it out loud, and he watches Zayn’s eyes focus on him, the brown color of them becoming almost clear as they settle on Harry, watching him back. 

“Good morning,” Harry offers, a small, shy smile playing on his lips.  


Zayn smiles back at him, sighing once again as he doesn’t take his eyes off of him. Harry knows Zayn heard him, that he’s studying him instead of answering him.

“Tell me,” Harry says, because he knows that Zayn is thinking something and he pushes the anxiety down to wait for it. 

“This,” Zayn starts, his head tilting to the side as he peers at him, letting Harry see his honesty. 

“This?”

“This is all I want, Haz,” Zayn says, eyes jumping as they look into each of Harry’s. He leans forward to kiss his forehead, Harry’s eyes automatically shutting as he feels the gentle press of soft lips. “Waking up to you lying in my arms is all I want.”

It’s almost like a curse, almost like a prayer, the way Zayn says it. It’s like he’s finally letting something go, like something is being released in him as he let’s the words out. Harry breathes with them, against them, trying to ignore the way his body both burns and chills with it all. 

“I feel like I can rule the world, you know?” Zayn says after Harry hasn’t opened his eyes, has stayed completely still against him. “I feel like nothing and everything matters, like I can touch a star and let it burn and be alright because I have you here lying with me.”

He moves his head closer to Harry’s, blinking slowly at him as he crowds his space. “I just want to feel happy, and this is where I do. With you.”

And suddenly Harry wants to cry, wants to sob and laugh and scream because Harry doesn’t handle… this. He doesn’t take intimacy well. He’s the bobbing light at parties, fluttering like humming bird’s wings from corner to corner and talking to arena’s full of people while jumping and yelling and moving, but never staying still. He wants to take in everything, feel everything. Harry likes to see the angles, understand different points of views of stories and theories and things that make up space and time. 

But this only has two angles, only has two views and two spaces trying to collide into each other. Because Zayn was honest with Harry but Harry doesn’t even know how to be honest with himself, let alone to be with other people. Especially people he’s been in love with since he was eighteen. 

And it makes him freeze, makes him mad. It makes him push against Zayn’s arms and stand up and walk along the cold wood of the ground that he feels mirror the ice in his chest, his feet hitting the carpet the bed rests on before walking over solid hardwood again and again like the way his heart flashes from warm to cold in circles. It makes him put on his pants because he’s mad; Harry loves being naked but you know he’s either furious or hurt when he puts clothes on and right now it seems to be both. 

“What is it?” Zayn asks from the bed, sitting up slowly and lazily but his eyes are cautious as all hell. 

Harry doesn’t answer him, silently trying to piece together his thoughts as he continues to pace all over Zayn’s floor. He feels naked as Zayn watches him quietly, resting against the black headboard and folding his hands in his lap as his eyes follow Harry’s movement. He’s quiet. 

Somehow the silence is deafening. 

Harry stops walking, just stops moving altogether and just walks over to the massive window that overlooks Zayn’s backyard. There’s a light on that illuminates Zayn’s giant pool - he can’t even swim, idiot - and there seems to be patio furniture along the vibrant, illegal green grass that covers the entire area. He can make out some bottles by the edge of the pool and how the chairs aren’t fully pushed in. He’s taking in everything, trying to intake all of it, trying to find a place for him in all of it. 

He’s trying to imagine himself in the pool, his long hair soaked to the roots and his tiniest, yellowest shorts on his waist as Zayn watches him from where he’s sitting on the edge, his feet in the water next to Harry and Rhino to his right, being pet. Harry’s trying to imagine them at the table, Zayn with a cigarette in his hand and his phone in the other and Harry wrapped in a blanket drinking some Chardonnay in one hand and reading a book of poems by Pablo Neruda he nicked from Zayn three years ago in the other. 

Somehow though, none of it seems tangible enough to be true. To give Harry what he needs, what he thinks he needs. Harry doesn’t even know what it means. 

It’s just all so blurry. 

“Do you want to talk now?” Zayn asks, the space he was giving Harry becoming too overwhelming. Harry can feel it, how it sticks to his skin like the stormy air before the rain. 

“Ironically, I don’t know what to say,” Harry tells him, still looking at the pool, still looking for himself. He hears Zayn get out of bed, pull on some pants and start to walk over to join him at the window. He doesn’t touch Harry though, which Harry’s surprisingly grateful for. 

“Wanna try asking questions? As a starting point?” Zayn asks, reaching up to scratch at the skin behind his neck, the place Harry had reached up and dug his nails into when Zayn started to thrust harder.

Harry shakes his head, trying to focus on the past instead of picturing the present. 

“There’s just so much,” he says, running a pulsing hand through his hair, pulling at the knots. He needs to cut it soon. 

“Okay,” Zayn says, turning to look at the pool again. 

“I’m just. ‘M trying to piece it together. All of it.”

“Where are you starting from?”

“The beginning.”

Zayn nods instead of answers, lifting a hand and pressing it against the window. Harry kind of wants to feel the window against his cheek, Zayn’s breath on his neck and his hands on Harry’s waist and legs. 

Focus. 

“I was never super close with you in the beginning. Not like you and Lou, or me and Liam. So I can see where that would confuse you,” He offers, hand fogging up the glass around it. 

“I had a crush on you then,” Harry tells him, watching his hand and wondering if he’s like the glass, all foggy and trying to adapt to Zayn’s heat. 

Zayn looks over at him, eyes careful and dark. He nods once before looking back at the backyard, letting out a sigh. 

“I did too. I just thought you and Lou…”

“Jesus, you too?”

“Are you seriously surprised?” Zayn says, taking his hand away and staring at his imprint, Harry wondering if that’s what his skin looks like now, his heart even. “The entire planet thought so. I didn’t know you that well until later and I realized you didn’t but by then I decided to keep my mouth shut.”

Harry rolls his eyes at him, because he’s ridiculous. Of all fucking things. 

“Okay. Keep going . What about after, when we became proper mates?”

“And you were apparently fucking every girl in England and half of America.”

“Sod off. I wasn’t and you know it.”

“I know. But it was still all we ever heard,” Zayn says, his voice sad. “I saw how much you hated it and I knew what it did to you. Didn’t think that was the best time either.”

Harry shakes his head at that. “Okay, but Rebecca? Perrie? Wanna explain that?”

“You wanna explain Taylor?” Zayn says, eyes challenging him.

“Okay now seriously fuck off. You know what that was. I told you everything about that!” Harry says, taking a step closer. Just barely. 

“And I told you everything about them. I just never told you the other part of it. The ‘you’ part,” Zayn says, automatically turning to face him, like they’re magnets and they’ve come too close. 

“I don’t even really count Rebecca.” He says stepping closer.

“I don’t count Taylor,” Harry says, stepping back. 

“Okay what about Caroline? Or Cara? Or Kendall? Do those count? Was I supposed to say something when you were always with Nadine? Or Nick?” Zayn says, shrugging with it but his face is stormy. 

“Friends. They were friends.” Harry argues. 

“Not all of them. And not all the time.” Zayn argues back, turning to look at the bed. Harry wants to shake him. 

“This is still different. You didn’t tell me. What was I supposed to do? Stay in my room and sulk and not socialize and forget you were fucking engaged for two years? Wanna explain that one?”

“How about you?” Zayn says, deflecting. “How long has it been for you? Was it just the show? Or? Why didn’t you tell me either?”

“I wanted to. But it kind of goes against my morals to try to break up an engagement.”

“Shut up,” Zayn says, pressing on his eyes. “I get it. I was engaged. You can ask another question now.”

“You haven’t even addressed that one.”

“Can you just ask another question?” Zayn says, shoulders tense and still putting pressure on his eyes. 

Harry keeps looking at him, and suddenly he sees nineteen year old Zayn. The one he cuddled on the couch with, jumped in a pool with naked, watched across bonfires and award shows and hotel rooms. He sees older versions of Zayn, the one who helped him with his first bong rip, who would flirt with him on stage, who always talked about his cute, curly hair and how close they were. 

_Is he my rock? Yeah._

The words Harry repeated to himself every night for a month afterwards, replaying them and tucking them away in the bottom of his heart, between his ribs and around the veins. 

“I always wanted you,” Harry tells him, making Zayn’s head snap up. “I just wanted you. To be around you and make you laugh or make you speak because I loved how goofy you got once you were comfortable.”

Zayn crosses his arms, head tilting a bit to the side and biting his lip. 

“With all of them, all the girls and the boys I tried to suffocate myself with, there somehow was always a part of you in there. In the cup of Jack I would order, even though I hated the taste, just because you smelled like it after we had a long night out. Or I would somehow always end up near the smoker’s lounge, I’m an idiot I know,” he laughs then, a small little thing that makes Zayn hitch a smile. “I would find someone who talked like you or had the color of your eyes. It was how I made it through the night, I think. I would find something in the interview or the party of the fashion show that reminded me of you and let it anchor me until it was time to leave. And then I would count down the time until I saw you next. Everytime.”

Harry huffs a laugh that sounds pathetic to his own ears, looking down as he plays with his hands while standing almost naked. 

“God, I wanted you.”

Zayn moves in then, stepping into Harry’s space and talking his hands with his own.

“Every time,” Zayn says, sliding his fingers between Harry’s, “every time I looked at you, or hugged you, or sexually assaulted you in some way on stage,” and Harry smiles at him “it was to get your attention. To get me to look at you the way you did. It always did something to me.”

“Remember when we fought? While doing the twitcam?” Harry asks randomly, the thought popping into his head. “And I was being all serious and you were mocking me.”

“I was not,” Zayn says, smiling at him “But you totally deserved it, you were being a proper brat.”

“Shut up,” Harry says, squeezing their hands. “That’s when I realized it was bad. What I felt for you. Because you pissed me off and all I wanted to do was still curl up next to you and watch a movie or read or something, but just be with you even in my anger. I think that’s when it really started for me.”

“I think that’s when I realized you’d drive me insane,” Zayn says, pulling on their hands and forcing them closer, speaking softer. “You’d make me want to rip my hair out but I’d still always want it to be you.”

Harry’s heart pangs at that.

“It wasn’t though,” he says, staring to pull away. 

“What?” Zayn asks, hands gripping onto Harry’s to keep him close but somehow Harry untangles them and walks away, away from the window and the stupid pool and stops at the closet doors. 

“It wasn’t us then.” He says, pulling on his bottom lip with one hand and crossing the other arm over his chest.

“Yeah,” Zayn says after a second, composing himself. “I thought we went over that.”

“We did,” Harry says, releasing his lips and crossing it over the other arm. “We didn’t say how it wasn’t us now.”

“What are you saying?” Zayn says, frustrated. “You’re talking in weird sentences.”

And it hits Harry. Where he is, what he’s doing, who he’s with. It hits him that it’s around nine at night and they’re both mostly naked and staring at each other from across a room that Harry didn’t even know what it looked like for years, and he realizes what Zayn’s saying to him. He looks around and sees the parts of Zayn he doesn’t recognize, and suddenly his heart is in his throat and his thoughts are in his hands because he’s moving and grabbing his jeans, putting them on hastily. 

“What are you doing? Are you leaving?” Zayn asks, his tone confused and maybe even… maybe even just a tad scared. 

“I have to go” Harry says, looking for his shirt and shoes. Which are in the foyer. Where Zayn took them off. 

Right.

He walks out of the room, Zayn’s voice chasing after him.

“Where are you going?”

“Away,” Harry says, trying to remember how to get to the foyer from the ridiculously long hallway he’s in. Was this here before? Did Zayn walk him this way?

“I can’t do this.” He says, turning at a door he thinks is the right way. 

“Can’t do what? Talk? Harry?” Zayn keeps after him, still in his pants and still looking confused as all hell. 

“Harry.”

Harry doesn’t look at him, walking faster down the other hallway and opening the door at the end which leads to what he guesses is the garage/workout room when he sees the weights and machines.

Damn.

“Harry. Harry, talk to me. Let’s talk, please. Why are you running? Harry?”

“Because I can’t do this!” Harry yells, whipping around and getting in Zayn’s face, causing Zayn to take a step back from him in complete shock. “I can’t sit here and talk to you like the past two years didn’t happen, like you suddenly weren’t there anymore and I had to try to make sense of the empty space that was constantly next to me. I can’t fucking do this. I don’t want this.” He says, chest heaving and eyes burning as he looks up at the ceiling and takes a deep breath.

Zayn seems to recover though. He no longer looks shocked, more guarded now. On edge, if you will. 

“I don’t understand,” Zayn says, taking a step closer. “Why? What did I do?”

“Nothing” Harry says, sounding defeated. He’s so tired, suddenly. So very very tired, drained of most of his energy and want. He doesn’t want to talk or fight anymore, he just wants to go home and climb into bed and pretend the last 24 hours didn’t happen. 

“Tell me. What did I do?”

“You didn’t do anything” Harry says, watching as Zayn steps even closer, right in front of him now. “ I just don’t.. I just don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

Harry just shrugs at him, acting uninterested in the conversation anymore. He’s really trying not to be.

“Don’t want this?” Zayn asks, his voice somehow even closer when he starts speaking softer, less loudly. “Do you want to talk about this?”

Harry doesn’t look at him, because he can feel himself start to shake and he feels the anger build at his core and his hands clench at his sides. He doesn’t want to do this.

“You said you wanted this before,” Zayn whispers, pressing closer like he’s trying to make Harry’s space his space. Like he’s trying to make himself a part of Harry instead of just someone watching from the outside. “What changed? Why is it so difficult now?”

“Because,” Harry says, stepping back and crossing his arms in front of his chest. Protecting himself. “Because, you left.”

“Harry,” Zayn says, stepping forward.

And Harry steps back, stepping out of his facade at the same time and finally cracking. 

“No, no you don’t get to do that,” He says, holding up a finger at Zayn. “Im proud, so proud of everything you’ve accomplished and I’m so glad you’re finally happy. Trust me, I remember. We all remember how hard it was for you. How you weren’t happy anymore.” He swallows something, whether it be spit or fear, but it lets him say the next few words.

“But you left, alright? You left and I had to make new memories with other people, with different people. We all had to try to manage again. I had to tell myself that I didn’t want you to come back, because hoping that you would hurt more than you actually leaving . So I had to move on and I had to convince myself the world without you was good enough, that grey was good enough. And now,” he says, shaking his head and looking at Zayn with an incredulous look. 

“Now you want to come back? To talk and figure us out? Now you want me to pick blue or red or green or -”

“No, I don’t,” Zayn interrupts. He steps closer and crowds Harry against the wall, trapping him so that he listens and actually looks at Zayn, in his eyes. “I left. I get it. I left you guys and I will always be remembered for that, I will always remember that and I’ve made my peace with it. But you don’t get it.”

“Get what?” Harry shouts, shoving his arms between them and frustratedly running his hands through his hair. “Can you just tell me because you suck at explaining and it hasn’t turned out well for either of us.”

“I had to find a life without you,” Zayn tells him, all earnest eyes with sadness that colors the outline of them. “I had to learn to live without you because it killed me, alright? It gutted me that I wasn’t happy anymore and that being around you hurt more and more each day. I was so alone in that aspect. I-”

“You had Perrie!” Harry tells him, heart racing at the thought of her again. It feels like knives are carving out old thoughts in him, like it’s March of 2015 all over again. “How the fuck were you alone when you had her and she-”

“She was there, Haz” Zayn talks over him, a little too calm for Harry’s liking right now. “She was there and she loved me and I loved her but not in the way we both needed. Not in the way it was with you.”

“You’re such a coward.” Harry says, stepping to the side and away yet again.

“Excuse me?” Zayn says, eyes popping open a bit.

“You’re such a fucking coward. You go four years without telling anyone? And you just start dating someone because you’re lonely? Because you thought I didn’t want you? Come off it, mate. Don’t give me that shit.” Harry tells him, seething in anger now. “You know the way I always looked at you. I know you saw it. I know you knew.”

Zayn doesn’t stop him.

“And then you don’t even have the decency of telling me to my face? The decency of sending me a message or ringing me up? No I have to find out through Jimmy fucking Fallon that you felt this way, for years. For years, of everything I told myself wasn’t allowed, of being careful because I was always scared the camera would catch me with these stupid hearts in my eyes. They did catch them, Christ’s sake.” Harry throws his arms up dramatically, feeling his he’s about to pull his hair out. “And then you up and left and didn’t even let me hug you goodbye, Zayn.” 

He feels like he’s about to sob, because these were the thoughts he threw into a chest and locked it with a key before hiding it again, in the ocean of his heart after March, during shows when he would turn and wouldn’t find Zayn there, or during the night when he subconsciously reached out to the other side of the bed and found it cold. These were the thoughts and feelings and everything that he was trying to forget. “You only let me sob my fucking eyes out over the phone, like a fucking _coworker_. You left me to try to piece myself back together and now you’re telling me this. You’re a fucking coward and now you’re asking me to be strong because you don’t have anything to lose. Not like me.”

“I have nothing to lose? Me?” Zayn asks, voice climbing and crowding in and trapping him again. “I have everything to lose. I can lose it all because you could bloody well decide you want nothing to do with me and then that’s it. There’d be nothing left and I will be left to always wonder and goddamnit it Harry, I hate fucking wondering. I’ve been wondering for too long.”

He pushes Harry against the wall, somewhat gently, and traps him in with his hands on either side of Harry’s head. Harry can’t feel his legs. 

“What do you want? Stop telling me no and then showing me yes. What do you want? We have wasted too much time not talking to each other, so tell me. Tell me.”

“I don’t know,” Harry says, cornered. 

“What do you want?” Zayn asks again, closer. 

“I don’t know,” he repeats again, softer, eyes closing against the tears he feels, against the sadness and the tiredness and the raw fear he feels in his spine. 

“Tell me, Harry,” Zayn begs, softly against his lips. 

“I want to be happy,” Harry finally gives, feeling the weight of it on his heart. “I want to be happy.”

“Let me make you happy,” Zayn says, more like kisses, into his jaw. 

“You make me scared,” Harry says, tilting his jaw and giving Zayn more access without a fight, his whole body shifting into another mode Harry’s never known. 

“Why?” Zayn whispers against the vein in his neck, hands gently running up his sides. 

“Beca-” Harry shivers, hands shifting to try to find something to grab onto. To steady himself.

“Because?”

“Because I know what it’s like to be left by you once. And I don’t think I can survive that again. I really don’t.”

Zayn stops kissing his neck and raises his head so that he and Harry are face to face, energy to energy. So that their chests can melt into one and Harry can feel how strong and steady Zayn’s heart is when he tells him, “I won’t.”

He looks into his eyes for a long moment, watching the emotions in them bounce back and forth before nodding a silent nod and melting into Zayn, feeling himself let go. They still have so much to talk about. So much to explain, to go over, to dissect.

Harry only really has one question right now, in this moment.

“Why did you come to LA?” He hears himself say. 

“Why did you come here?” Harry asks behind Zayn’s ear, between the little bites he keeps giving him. “Why?”

“I needed to find you,” Zayn tells him with a heavy breath, grabbing onto his sides. “I needed to be near you. And you were here.”

“You could have just came to me,” Harry says, biting a little too hard, punishing Zayn enough to make him shiver.

“We both know how that would have turned out.”

“Doesn’t matter anymore,” Harry says, kissing a line from his ear to the corner of his pink lips. 

“I missed you,” Zayn says, still talking. He raises his head and kisses the words into Harry’s forehead, making Harry’s eyes close. “I missed you so I tried to find you in the places you always told me about. It helped. I can’t look at LA without seeing you anymore.”

“Good.”

+++

They sit and talk after, about interviews and hotel rooms and dark alleys that Harry had half forgotten about but Zayn reminded him with a gentle touch every time. They talk about those sleepless nights when Zayn needed someone to hold him because he felt like he was breaking apart, like he couldn’t breathe because the darkness was too dense for his small bunk in the bus, and Harry would climb in behind him when he heard Zayn’s rough breathing and would hold him tight and let him try to match his breathing instead, calming his heart. They talk about the good, about the funny moments, about that one time during 1D Day when the interviewer asked them what they had walked in on seeing and they looked in on each other because they had walked in on Niall in lingerie and webcamming someone before storming them out of the room. 

They talk about the bad though. They really talk about the bad. About the nights when Zayn felt like he was miserable, when he would curl into Louis in the back of the bus and Harry would watch from far away because he knew Zayn was hurting and he didn’t know how to fix it. Zayn tells him about that flight out of Asia, when he stepped on the stairs and he turned around to see Liam and Niall watching from the car because Harry was sleeping and Louis was petty. He tells him about how he almost didn’t get on it, how he turned around because he was going to get back in the car, drive back to the hotel and climb into Harry’s bed until the next time he thought about how unhappy he was. But how he didn’t, how he looked up and saw the moon and wanted to be like the moon, bright, beautiful, alone. He tells him about crying for half the flight, sitting completely still for the other half until they landed and he stumbled off the plane into some car and drove off. How he didn’t sleep for a week because of it. How he almost didn’t pick up the phone when Harry called, before he made it official. How he broke his phone after the call.

They talk about how Harry had to go on stage with three other aching hearts, how they had to try to fill the space Zayn always had because he knew the fans saw it, felt it in their hearts, just like them. He told Zayn about walking out to a stadium full of people they didn’t really expect to be there, and how he cried when he got off stage because he was so glad they came but he also wished they hadn’t. He wished he had a reason to not try anymore. But he tells him how it got better, how they figured out the _What Makes You Beautiful_ formation and how they tried to fill in the spaces with laughter and jokes and smiles and love. And eventually they did. But sometimes they would take a picture for a shoot and he’d realize that he unconsciously left a space for Zayn there, between him or next to him or in front. How he always left a place for Zayn, in the formation, in line, in his heart. They talk and some parts make Harry ache but it’s okay because Zayn kisses him and it makes him forget the pain of it, the weird feeling of loss they have because of the time they let pass by. 

"I think it was in Japan, actually," Zayn says, after they moved from the hallway to the floor to the bed again, ditching clothes so that they can be fully against each other, skin on skin, heart to heart. "I think that was when I knew I was stuck in it for the long run. I almost told you then, after we had diner at that one weird little house and they filmed us for the movie." He says, Harry watching him from half a foot away, the sheets crowding around him and contrasting so beautiful with both of their skins. "I think that's when I realized I like, proper loved you. It wasn’t a crush that could go away anymore. I wouldn't ever stop loving you."

He looks up at Harry then, and Harry feels the words stick in his throat, but just like it always is with him, he kisses Zayn instead of answers him, moving closer and settling on top of him. 

“Keep going,” Harry says after a minute of silence, the words Zayn just said to him too much for him to respond to. He will later, he promises himself. He’ll remind himself to tell him later. 

“Okay,” Zayn says without skipping a beat, always indulging Harry. “What’s your special lyric?”

“Come again?” Harry asks, lifting his eyes from where they were focused on the tattoo on Zayn’s arm, the ZAP! he always use to place his hand over after he first got it.

“You know, your favorite lyric. The one you’re keeping for your favorite song. The one you haven’t found the right beat for or the rest of the lyrics don’t work but you can’t forget that one lyric,” Zayn says, watching as Harry starts to outline the shape of the lips on Zayn’s chest with his fingers, gently touching his warm skin. 

“Well. It’s, uhm, it’s kind of dumb.” Harry says, tipping his face down as if to hide.

“Don’t make me come down there,” Zayn threatens, tilting his head a bit and smirking at Harry.

Harry laughs at him, all languid smiles and gentle eyes. “Shut up. You’re making it worse.”

“Tell me.” Zayn says, lightly touching his arm. 

Harry sighs at the sweetness of the touch.

“Okay well, it’s uhm. It goes something like...”

“Harry,” Zayn says, sounding unconvinced.

“Alright alright.” He says, rolling his eyes. “It’s _‘I’m trying to keep you in places that’ll last forever, but it’s hard to write someone you don’t know anymore’_ ”.

Harry can feel Zayn stare at him hard as Harry stares at the lips on his chest, on the ones he still hasn’t tasted yet. 

“That’s a lyric?” Zayn says, voice tight, hand no longer tracing his skin but simply laying on top of it.

Harry shrugs at him, still looking down. “I don’t know what it is really. It’s just something I wrote that I never forgot.”

Zayn moves up then, sliding his arms behind Harry’s back and pulling him closer to him so that Harry’s proper in his lap, Zayn nosing into his hair. “You’ll never not know me, Haz. You’re probably the one who knows me best.”

Harry relaxes into his, fitting his face against Zayn's neck. 

“Even after all this time?”

“You’ll always know me,” He says, kissing the space between his eyes. “I’ll always be me whenever I’m with you.”

They stay like that until almost twilight, when the sun starts to stretch again and fill up the sky with its new stories and familiar warmth. Harry realizes it's been over a day since he got in his car and drove, how he he drove to run away but in the end he drove to run toward instead. He drove to fix something he didn't know was broken, to start something instead of say goodbye. 

He and Zayn are sitting on the couch, eating bowls of cereal and watching Good Will Hunting on the television. Harry's never particularly felt connected with this movie when he's watched it. He loved it, of course, but he never felt that soul bonding, life changing nostalgia that he gets with the rest of the movies on his favorite movie shelf back at home.. Not once. But somehow, tonight, when Sean - or rather, Robin Williams - is reading Will’s note and Chuck knocks for him but Will has left already, when he tells Sean he's got to see about a girl, and the picture changes to a car driving down the highway, Elliott Smith singing into the credits, Harry understands. He gets it. Will wasn’t running away anymore.

"I should probably head home now. Change my pants and shower and stuff," he says when they’re just sat watching the movie credits, hand idly playing with Zayn's where they rest between them. 

"If you want," Zayn says, gentle. "It's only down the street and I have extra clothes here. Plus it’s like, morning."

"I know. I'll be back soon," Harry says, pulling Zayn up as he stands. It's not awkward , like you think it'd be, walking toward the door with his hand behind him because Zayn didn't let it go. He puts on his boots and grabs his keys from the table before feeling Zayn grab his shirt and press him against his chest, holding him close, breathing against his neck. 

"I'm really glad you were watching tv," Zayn tells him, making Harry laugh as he rubs his hands up and down Zayn's back, turning his head and watching Zayn pull back so that they're face to face, barely inches apart. 

"You know I'd see it anyway. Niall would have probably called."

"Has he?" Zayn asks, his nose scrunching at the thought and smiling at the same time. He loves Niall, Harry knows. Everyone loves Niall. 

"Probably. I wouldn't know, my phone’s in the car." Harry says with a shrug. 

"I turned mine off when I heard your car," Zayn says, eyelashes fluttering and eyes serious but relaxed, easy. 

Harry kisses him, drawing all the emotions of the past twenty four hours into it as he holds Zayn by his waist and Zayn wraps his arms around Harry's shoulders, pulling him in closer. 

"Come back," he says, kissing him again and again between the words. "Come back soon. I'll be here. I promise."

"I will," Harry says, rolling his eyes but secretely loving how dramatic they are. They're made for each other this way. In all ways, when he thinks about it.

He kisses him again before pulling back, opening the door and stepping through, Zayn right behind him. 

He makes it two steps before he sees the sky and sees the color of Zayn's heart painted across it, the purple that transforms to pink to orange to blue, how it resembles the way Harry's love never changed but just transformed. He makes it two steps before feeling the space he’s leaving behind, feeling how much distance he’s just put between him and the one he thought had gotten away. He makes it two steps before turning around and pulling Zayn to him again, kissing him like his life depended on it. Kissing him like Zayn was his dying breath and Harry was in need of a last minute prayer, like nothing could stop him, not the end of the world, not the beginning of another one. It was just them and nothing could separate them. Not again. 

"I do too," Harry says gently, his heart in his throat and his stomach in his hands. He pulls back and tries catching his breath as he leans his forehead against Zayn's. "I love you too. I've loved you since before I understood what it meant."

And he sees the way Zayn finally relaxes, like he was waiting for Harry to say it, the tension dissipating as his nervousness fades. Harry knows it's probably why Zayn told Harry to come back, because he wasn't completely sure. Not when Harry wasn't even sure himself. 

But he is now. 

And that's all that matters.

He walks away then, because he knows he can and not regret it. He can let the blossoming sky swallow him up because Zayn’s watching him go, watching him unlock his car and waving as Harry pulls away, as he drives down the long driveway and turns right, tires thumping against the street. It doesn’t feel like a goodbye though. Not when Harry gets home and showers for half an hour, not when he feeds his cat and waters his plant, not when he pulls on his jeans and boots and rushes out the door and gets into his car, driving down the street, turning left. 

He doesn’t have time for goodbyes.

He’s got to see about a boy.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it :]
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr if you wanna talk<3](http://www.harryandtheprince.tumblr.com/)


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